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Jonathan Pearlman
Jonathan Pearlman is the editor of Australian Foreign Affairs and is a correspondent for the Telegraph (UK) and the Straits Times (Singapore).
There was no chaplain aboard the troopship Transylvania as it travelled across the Mediterranean Sea for France in 1916, so the sermon was left to Frank Bethune, a Tasmanian clergyman and private soldier. Bethune rose on the promenade deck and informed the soldiers that, god-fearing or not, they were righting a great wrong and were not heroes, but men. ‘What else do we wish except to go straight ... (read more)
Beyond chutzpah is a long, tedious and barely readable rant, known less for its content than for the childless controversy it succeeded in provoking. Despite the promise of its subtitle, the book makes no meaningful attempt to describe or to understand the misuses of anti-Semitism. It is, instead, an obsessive assault on another book, The Case For Israel (2003), by the Harvard law professor Alan D ... (read more)
In recent years, particularly since the Tampa and children overboard incidents and the 9/11 attacks, there has been a marked change in public and political perceptions of Middle Eastern migrants and the Arab–Australian community. In August 2001, for instance, the chair of a parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s relations with the Middle East, David Jull, introduced the committee’s report wi ... (read more)
In his final, unfinished opus, the German writer Max Weber presented his exemplar of irrational, arbitrary law-making by describing an image of a Muslim qadi, or judge, sitting beneath a palm tree, dispensing justice as he saw fit. Later, as scholars began to examine Western portraits of the east – particularly in the wake of Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism – Weber’s description was ... (read more)
As Israel began its assault on Gaza last year, the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, launched the offensive by declaring: ‘There is a time for calm and a time for fighting.’ His declaration alluded to Ecclesiastes, but overturned the order of the verse. Not so long ago, however, in an era that has since been largely misrepresented by its detractors, there was a time for peace; a time when, ... (read more)
The fears and tensions in the aftermath of September 11 created an unusual political climate in the US, in which it became possible for the government to lead an invasion without having to explain precisely why. Nobody seemed to quite know who or what was guiding the administration as it led the charge for war: was it utopian neo-conservatives trying to reshape the world in America’s image? Was ... (read more)
As with so many of the events that mark Israel’s history, the deadly attack on the Gaza flotilla in late May seemed frustratingly – and tragically – to encapsulate many of the arguments, insecurities, defences, and emotions that swirl around the enduring conflict in the Middle East.
At first, the result and immediate consequences of the confrontation aboard the Mavi Marmara appeared relativ ... (read more)
At about the time that he was preparing the final drafts of The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot was preoccupied by a separate, but no less overwhelming question: when to sell his shares in the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company. In October 1922, the month the poem was published in the periodical he edited, the Criterion, Eliot wrote to his brother, Henry: ‘For myself, the important point is that Hydraulic sho ... (read more)
There is only one verse in the Koran that deals with suicide. Its content seems pretty clear: ‘Do not kill yourselves’ (4:29). Of course, the verse has not stopped waves of Muslim suicide bombers in the past twenty-five years. Nor has it stopped a smattering of extremist Muslim clerics from using the Koran to promote or justify suicide missions. Their somewhat contorted reasoning usually goes ... (read more)